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People who have lost a limb, whether a hand, an arm, a foot, or a leg, often continue to feel the limb as present, feeling a phantom limb. Phantom sensations can be of touch and movement, but around 65 per cent of patients develop chronic pain, with sensations of stabbing, burning or cutting which are often severe. Virtual reality is beginning to suggest a way to avoid this, by giving the limb itself back, at least as far as the nervous system is concerned.

Reproduced with permission of The Wellcome Trust,
this article takes a look in depth at the use of VR based limbs, to
trick the brain into thinking the limb is still physically there - and
make the pain vanish.

Previous research on virtual limbs to remove phantom limb pain, by Dr Jonathan Cole, a clinical neurophysiologist at Poole Hospital and Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton, showed that pain can be reduced by activity in the brain involved in imagined movement of the phantom limb. Now, scientists at the University of Manchester, are developing a VR system to take that imagination one step further.